And it seemed to her unseemly that her father's secretary should be making mock of her father's proceedings with a man who was a complete stranger to her.

She walked impetuously ahead of Aubrey and Elizabeth.

Towards the west the beautiful day was dying, and the light streamed on the girl's lithe young figure and caught her golden-brown hair.

Clouds of gnats rose in the mild air; and a light seemed to come back from the bronzed and purple hedgerows, making a gorgeous atmosphere, in which the quiet hill-top and the thinning trees swam transfigured.

A green woodpecker was pecking industriously among some hedgerow oaks, and Pamela, who loved birds and watched them, caught every now and then the glitter of his flight.